


Baby It's Cold Outside

by CaseofUnderjoy (lullabelle)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Denny's Diner, Epithet Abuse, Gen, Kinda, POV Outsider, Ugly Christmas Ornaments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 00:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13065654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lullabelle/pseuds/CaseofUnderjoy
Summary: It's a couple of days before Christmas and Ari has resigned herself to a slow worknight. And then three strangers walk in.





	Baby It's Cold Outside

**12:00 AM: Two Lumberjacks and a Tax Accountant walk into a Diner**

Midnight. It’s officially the day before the day before Christmas. It also might be the slowest shift Ari’s worked in the six months since she’d started the overnights. They really don’t need two waitresses, but the management prefers no one work alone on the graveyard.

Kaydee, the other waitress unfortunate enough to be along for this boring-ass ride, calls back into the kitchen, “Hey, Malik!”

“Hey, what?” Malik calls back, sounding exactly as thrilled to be here as she is.

“Wanna make me some pancake puppies?”

“Girl, you’re gonna turn into a pancake puppy,” Malik replies, but Ari hears the sound of pans banging so she guesses he’s making them. Honestly, she’s kind of jealous of Kaydee’s metabolism -- if she ate half the amount of sugar she’s seen that girl consume in a day she’d be as big as a house.

The sleigh bells hanging from the front door jangle and three men make their way inside. They’re all pretty good looking, if slightly rumpled. Two of them are dressed in lumberjack-casual -- like, the clothes aren’t rugged enough for them to be actual loggers, but not nearly hipstery enough to call lumbersexual. The third guy is dressed in a rumpled suit and seasonally inappropriate trench coat. The lumberjacks are both carrying overnight bags so, she thinks, maybe they’ve come from the jetport. There’s not much open on that side of town this time of night, so it’s not unheard of for travelers to head over to Denny’s for a bite to eat after a flight.

Satisfied she’s more or less got their number, she raises an eyebrow at Kaydee. Neither of them has had a table yet. Kaydee shrugs. “You can take them. I have pancake puppies coming.”

Ari resists the urge to roll her eyes -- Kaydee’s not a bad coworker, but she’s a full time college student who’s at least partially on her parents’ bankroll, and sometimes it’s obvious she doesn’t need this job the same way Ari does. 

Ari puts her game face on, greeting her customers with an enthusiasm she doesn’t feel. One of the lumberjacks -- the one with short hair and green eyes -- is probably the most traditionally good looking, and he’s obviously well aware of it. He flirtatiously overpronounces her name (Araceli, which no one but her parents call her, and even then only when they’re mad… at least he didn’t try to roll the R) when ordering his Lumberjack Slam (heh).

The trenchcoated man in the booth beside him seems to be perplexed by his menu, so Flirty Douche takes it from him and tells her he’ll have the same thing. The taller lumberjack with the longish hair grimaces a little before ordering a veggie egg white omelet and a water.

“What, no salad?” she hears Flirty Douche ask mockingly as she walks away to put in their orders.

“Even the stuff in their salads is fried,” is the response. He’s not wrong.

 

**1:00 AM: Oh the Weather Outside is Weather**

“I feel like the decorations are particularly hideous this year,” Kaydee mentions. She’s finished eating her puppies and is fiddling with a shiny faux-porcelain ornament shaped like a Denny’s sign hanging from a strand of garland.

“You should see the reject pile,” Malik tells them from the other side of the order window. Their building is kind of old, so the window is narrower and higher up than it would be at most other restaurants in their chain so she can only really see his head and shoulders. He passes a shoebox through to them. “I’ve already called dibs, so don’t get any bright ideas.”

“Holy shit,” Kaydee mutters, low enough that their customers won’t hear. “Are these _mermen_?”

“Yup. Manager-Mike’s mom picked them up at a garage sale. I genuinely don’t think she had any idea just how _gay_ they were.”

Ari holds up a sparkly, shirtless merman holding a martini glass. “ _This_ didn’t strike her as kinda gay?”

Malik shrugs. “She’s older than God. I think she just thought they were kitschy.”

Kaydee holds up a merman wearing a chef’s hat and holding a spatula, chef’s jacket open to reveal sculpted, shimmering pectorals. “Look, Malik! This one’s just like you. You know, if you were really, really white.”

“And also a merman,” Malik points out.

“And also a merman,” Kaydee concedes. “But otherwise: just like.”

“Alright, alright. Give ‘em back before you break ‘em.” He holds his hand out for the box and they hand it back over. “I’m putting these on the tree before Kev’s parents come over, since he vetoed the penis lights. ‘Tis the season for horrifying your conservative in-laws.”

“Fa la la la la,” Ari deadpans. She picks up a fresh pot of coffee. “If you’ll excuse me, my gentlemen look undercaffeinated.”

Her only table has finished their meals -- “finished” being a kind of loose term since the man in the trenchcoat took one neat bite of every item on his plate and left the rest untouched. Before she takes his plate away, Flirty Douche liberates it of its remaining ham, sausage, and bacon.

As she’s walking away she hears him yell, “Hey! No. If you wanted bacon, you should have gotten bacon.”

“Obviously I didn’t have to. There were leftovers.”

She glances behind herself to see Tall Guy brandishing a piece of bacon and Flirty Douche looking pissed. 

“He gave that to _me_.”

“Oh please, he didn’t _give_ you anything.”

Ari puts her plates down in an empty bus tub and grabs the spray bottle and rag hanging off its side. She starts cleaning the already clean counter just so that she can watch the drama play out. Night this slow, she gets her kicks where she can.

“Besides,” Tall Guy continues. “He likes me better.”

Flirty Douche sputters. “Does not!” He claps Trenchcoat on the shoulder. “Tell him.”

“I’m uncomfortable with the direction this conversation has taken.” Trenchcoat’s voice is much more gravelly than Ari would have expected. He seems vaguely perplexed by the exchange going on in front of him.

Tall Guy finally jams the bacon in his mouth, just as Flirty Douche makes a grab for it and knocks Tall Guy’s glass of water everywhere.

“Hey!” Tall Guy yells through his bacon. A good amount of the water flows directly into his lap.

“Shit,” Flirty Douche mutters, grabbing a handful of napkins from the dispenser. 

Ari manages not to look too irritated, she thinks, maybe. She hurries off for a clean rag. The commotion must have caught Kaydee’s attention because she meets her with one halfway. She really isn’t half bad to work with.

She mops up the rest of the spill and clears away the sodden napkins. “Can I get you another water?” she asks Tall Guy, part of her wishing he’ll say no.

“If you’ll trust me with it,” he replies. Even though she’s bending over, he talks to her face and not her chest, so she supposes she can forgive him for the water.

 

**2:00 AM: Home for the Holidays**

She brings Tall Guy another water, and aside from a comment about what the wet spot on Tall Guy’s lap suggests about his bladder control, he and Flirty Douche seem content to stop antagonizing each other.

They hang around after they’ve clearly finished eating. It would jive with her jetport theory if they’re waiting for a ride, but… well. It’s nothing they’ve _done_ exactly, but something about them seems _off_. Not so much to make her wary of them, but she’s getting the impression there’s something going on with them she’s not quite understanding. Whatever the situation, they’re pretty low maintenance. She keeps an eye on their coffees, but they seem to have slowed up on drinking them. She doesn’t think Trenchcoat’s touched his at all.

Kaydee gets a table of young parents -- starving after a long flight delay and harrowing airline experience -- and their cranky, exhausted four-year-old. The kid spends ten minutes crying just cuz, two minutes choking down a piece of French Toast through tears, and then the last ten minutes of the family’s rushed meal passed out cold in the booth, not even twitching when Kaydee draws them directions to the nearby Motel 6 on a napkin.

“Please tell me they tipped well,” Ari says when they’re gone.

Kaydee shrugs. “Decent.”

“Worth coming into work tonight?”

Kaydee snorts. “Nope,” she says, popping her lips on the P.

Time for an act of mercy. “Go home, Kaydee.”

Kaydee shakes her head. “What if you get busy? Besides, Mike wants us on the buddy system.”

“I won’t get busy, and Malik can be my buddy.”

“I’m a great buddy,” Malik calls from the kitchen.

“He’s a great buddy,” Ari confirms.

Kaydee sighs and fake-pouts. Ari _knows_ she wants to go home, but she appreciates the performative foot-dragging. “Fine,” she says eventually. “Thanks, Ari.” She hurries off to clean her recently vacated table.

Ari spares a glance for her own occupied table by the window. The three men aren’t even really talking to each other, but they do keep looking out the window. They’re definitely waiting for something.

 

**3:00 AM: Jack Frost Nipping**

“That’s weird,” Ari says, mostly to herself as she watches frost snake its way across the front windows. The temperature, which had been hovering just above freezing all night, must have suddenly dropped.

The street lights illuminating the parking lot start going out one by one.

“Wow, weird,” Kaydee says, coming up behind her and echoing her thought. She’s got her jacket on and her purse in hand. “Good thing I parked close, huh?”

She grabs the door handle, but a hand reaches past her to hold the door shut. “I wouldn’t.” It’s Flirty Douche.

Kaydee gives him the kind of fake smile Ari’s too familiar with -- a smile for placating the overly chivalrous. “It’s okay, really,” she says. She points at a nearby vehicle. “That’s my car right there. You can watch me walk to it if you want.”

Ari’s got a bad feeling, like maybe there’s something more dangerous than a dark parking lot out there. “Maybe you should wait,” she says.

Kaydee turns to her, presumably to argue, but before she can say anything the lights go out in the restaurant too. Back in the kitchen she can hear Malik cussing as he drops something with clang.

“What’s going on?” Kaydee asks, sounding nervous.

Ari’s not listening to her, though. Her eyes haven’t quite adjusted to the lack of fluorescent lighting, but the night is clear and the dim glow of starlight and far-off streetlights is just enough for to make out movement at the far edge of the parking lot. “Something’s out there.”

Flirty Douche squints in the same direction she’s looking. There’s more movement, she thinks, off to either side. So maybe there are several somethings out there.

Flirty Douche seems to come to the same conclusion. “Get away from the windows,” he says.

“What--” Ari starts, but her question turns into a cry of indignation when Flirty Douche decides to be just _Douche_ by grabbing her arm and dragging her toward the back of the dining room. She tries to free herself, but Trenchcoat is crowding her on the other side. She catches a glimpse of Tall Guy steering Kaydee along behind her.

They make it as far as the swinging doors to the kitchen. It’s pitch dark inside, but she can hear Malik say angrily, “The _fuck_ do you think you’re doing with them?”

No one answers though, because at that moment the front windows explode inward. She and Kaydee are both shoved toward Malik, who staggers when they collide with him but manages to maintain his footing.

“Stay down,” someone says, and their world is suddenly filled with noise.

**3:30 AM: Do You Hear What I Hear?**

They stay down. Mostly. They mean to, anyway, but there’s just enough moonlight to catch glimpses of the chaos in the dining room so they keep popping their heads up to look. It’s hard to make sense of what they’re seeing -- flashes of light followed by bodies dropping. Gunshots? Ari thinks she sees a sword. They block the swinging doors with one of the the heavy metal prep tables, noise caused by dragging it going unnoticed in the din, but with the long, narrow food window completely open, they need to do their best to stay hidden while her three weird customers battle whateverthefuck is out there.

She sees Trenchcoat clap his hand over a misshapen face, light flashing beneath his palm and briefly illuminating his face as the creature collapses.

She’s squinting into the gloom trying to see more when something -- a spear? -- whizzes past her head to clank against the back of the flat top. 

“Shit!” she yells, and ducks back down. There’s a shape in the window where she just was, grasping and reaching and trying to pull itself through. They’ve been spotted.

Something slams against the swinging doors, but the prep table holds. They’re fucked as soon as whatever it is figures out they also open the other way.

“Walk-in!” Malik yells. 

Ari nearly falls over Kaydee following her into the refrigerator, Malik right behind her. 

“How’re we going to lock it?” she yells to him. 

Malik doesn’t answer. He’s already shut the two of them in.

 

**4:00 am: Stone Cold Chillin’**

If they could barely see in the kitchen, the fridge is absolutely perfectly pitch dark. And _cold_.

“At least,” Kaydee points out, “the power is off so it won’t get any colder.” Then, “This thing isn’t airtight, is it?”

“It’s not,” Ari says even though she’s not completely sure. They’d been graced with the muffled sounds of fighting for a while, but now those noises have dwindled to nothing. She’s not sure if that means it’s over, or if it’s just moved away from the fridge. Or maybe the creatures lost interest in the kitchen after killing Malik. No, that’s not something she’s going to think about right now.

“You should wear my jacket for a while,” Kaydee says, and Ari can hear the sound of her zipper moving, and rustling as she starts to take it off.

“If you take that jacket off I swear to fuck I’ll knock your ass out and put it back on,” Ari snaps.

The rustling stops. After a moment, Kaydee mutters, “Jesus, fine,” and zips it back up.

Enough time passes that Ari’s been able to thoroughly consider what a stupid death freezing in a walk-in fridge would be when there’s a fucking _monster battle_ going on right outside. Like dying in a Denny’s isn’t bad enough.

Finally she hears the handle of the walk-in jiggle. Both she and Kaydee scramble to stand up, Ari careful to keep the younger girl behind her. 

The door opens. It’s Flirty Douche holding a flashlight, covered in blood.

“Holy shit,” Kaydee blurts.

He looks down at himself. “It’s not mine,” he says. Then he adds, wincing a little, “Not most of it, anyway.”

“Malik?” Ari asks.

Flirty Douche looks confused for a second, then he seems to put it together. “Your friend’s fine. He’s out front.”

Ari pushes past Flirty Douche into the kitchen, almost immediately tripping on the pots and pans littering the floor, smashed plates crunching beneath her feet. Flirty Douche retrains his flashlight so she can see where she’s going and she continues forward more carefully. 

The dining room’s no better. She can see a little more thanks to the dim light through the windows. She doesn’t think there’s a single unbroken piece of furniture left in the whole place.

And there are also the bodies. They’re vaguely human shaped, but she’d seen enough to know they weren’t human. They didn’t _move_ like humans. But her curiosity about them is overriden by her desire to make sure Malik’s alright. She finds him outside, sitting on the curb, looking a little dazed. His white shirt’s ripped and bloody, but he seems to be uninjured.

“You’re okay!” she exclaims.

He jumps a little, but recovers quickly. “I am now.” He drops his voice and leans in conspiratorially. “That trenchcoat motherfucker can _heal_ people.”

A gravelly voice from nearby adds, “He can also hear you.”

Ari and Malik both freeze, but when it appears Trenchcoat isn’t going to engage them any further, Malik says sadly, “My mermen got smashed.”

Ari can’t help it. She laughs hysterically.

 

**4:30 am: Hel’s Coming With Me**

When Ari finally gets a hold of herself, she spots Flirty Douche not far away, leaning in to talk to Tall Guy and Trenchcoat by the light of his flashlight. She takes a deep breath and marches over to them. “So what the fuck happened here exactly?”

Flirty Douche cuts himself off and shrugs at her. “It’s over now.”

She shakes her head. “No, no, no. Not good enough. Not even approaching good enough. What _happened_ here?”

Flirty Douche exchanges a look with Trenchcoat and Tall Guy. Trenchcoat remains impassive. Tall Guy just shrugs.

Flirty evidently takes that as the go-ahead, because he says, “Okay, you know that tiny little graveyard at the edge of the parking lot?”

“Yeah,” Ari says. There are tons of little, old-ass family graveyards around here, crumbling gravestones protected by modern fences. She barely even notices them.

“Well, turns out one of the graves is a portal to Niflheim.”

“Niflheim,” she repeats.

“Icy Nordic hell.”

Ari frowns. “So those things were… _undead_?”

Flirty Douche says “no”, at the same time Trenchcoat says “yes”, and Tall Guy says “sorta”.

Yeah, this is going nowhere. “Are they going to come back?”

Trenchcoat answers. “Unlikely. The portal is only open twice a year, for a few hours around the solstice. It’ll close soon if it hasn’t already, and we have a ritual to seal it permanently. We came to your restaurant because it was a good ‘stake out’ spot.” He makes air quotes around the phrase _stake out_. “As near as we could tell nothing had come through in thousands of years,” he adds apologetically. “We were ill prepared.”

“Speaking of which, we should probably get on the whole portal closing thing,” Flirty Douche points out.

Ari looks back at the restaurant. “What are we supposed to tell people about _that_?” she asks.

Tall Guy drops his voice and mutters, “There _are_ a lot of hard-to-explain bodies in there.”

Flirty Douche thinks a moment, and then says, “Tell them you smelled gas.” He heads back toward the building, Tall Guy following behind. Trenchcoat starts after them, but she hears Flirty Douche say, “Keep an eye on them,” to him and he abruptly stops walking.

Ari scurries back to Malik and Kaydee, who’s joined Malik in sitting on the curb. “We should get away from the building.”

“Why?” Kaydee asks tiredly.

“Because I’m pretty sure they’re about to blow it up.”

That gets their attention. They’re on their feet quickly, making their way across the still-dark parking lot. Ari slows as she realizes this is bringing them closer to the graveyard. 

“Don’t worry,” Trenchcoat says behind her. “The portal is closed now.”

Only moments after they reach the far edge of the lot, Flirty Douche and Tall Guy come hauling ass out of the building. They’ve almost made it to them when the building just kind of _erupts_ in the kind of explosion Ari had once thought only existed in movies. In seconds her workplace had basically become a crater.

“I quit,” says Malik.

 

**9:00 am: Happy Trails**

Several hours later, Ari is well and truly exhausted. She’s been asked the same questions over and over and over, and given the same agreed-upon answers -- they smelled gas, so they got out of the building, and they were about to call the fire department when the whole place went up. No one had seemed particularly suspicious of them. Malik’s continued state of shock and Kaydee’s intermittent crying as the stress of the last few hours caught up with her probably helped sell it.

She’d waited with Kaydee for her mom to get her -- turns out parking close to the building hadn’t been as advantageous as she’d originally thought it’d be. Kaydee’s mom had offered her a ride, but she’d turned it down. Honestly Ari needs a little time to gather herself before facing her own family with her near death experience and shiny new unemployment. 

So, here she is. At her regular bus stop, at an only slightly later than regular time. The normalcy of it feels unreal.

She’s deep in thought when the sound of a particularly car loud engine pulls her back to the present. A big, black, old looking car is crawling up the curb toward her. Flirty Douche is in the driver seat, with Tall Guy riding shotgun. Trenchcoat’s in the back.

The driver side window rolls down. 

“You get everything taken care of?” she asks before he can get a word out.

“Portal’s closed for good.”

“Good.” 

“Good,” he repeats. She’s not sure why he stopped to talk to her, but whatever the reason he seems satisfied. “Alright. Take care of yourself.” The window starts to roll up.

“Wait a sec,” Ari says. The window stops. “You got a name?”

Flirty Douche regards her for a moment. Finally he says, “Yup,” and rolls his window up the rest of the way.

**Author's Note:**

> _“That was kinda douchey, Dean,” Tall Guy tells him as they drive away._
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> This was written for spncoldesthits on tumblr! Go give some of the other fics some love.  
> http://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com/post/168711859235/we-have-a-total-of-16-fics-for-decembers


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